Scales

Can you tell the difference between 80°F and 81°F?  Yeah neither can I.  Anything above 95°F is just hot.  Same thing below 0°F, that’s bitterly cold.  Does it matter how far below zero the temps go?  How can you have a negative temperature?  Okay, I don’t want to go down that road.
 
Having accurate temperatures and records is important so I guess we need to keep the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales.  But let me recommend a new temperature gauge.

Anything below 0°F:         inescapable cold

0°-15°F:                          running cold:  run between building and cars quickly
16°-40°F:                        Winter normal:  manageable with lots of hot chocolate
41°-60°F:                        Spring and Fall normal:  starting to get comfortable
61°-85°F:                        Summer ahhs:  perfect temps
86°-95°F:                       +humidity = uncomfortable
95°F and above:               inescapable heat

It makes the temperature more descriptive doesn’t it?  Whatever temperature you are in, enjoy it.

Pack out what you pack in.

 

After the Winter

After the Winter
Claude McKay

Some day, when trees have shed their leaves

And against the morning’s white
The shivering birds beneath the eaves
Have sheltered for the night,
We’ll turn our faces southward, love,
Toward the summer isle
Where bamboos spire to shafted grove
And wide-mouthed orchids smile.

And we will seek the quiet hill

Where towers the cotton tree,
And leaps the laughing crystal rill,
And works the droning bee.
And we will build a cottage there
Beside an open glade,
With black-ribbed blue-bells blowing near,
And ferns that never fade.

From:  Black Nature:  Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, Edited by Camille T. Dungy, ©2009 by the University of Georgia Press, Athens, GA

 

Temperature

In order to understand how temperatures are measured you have to understand thermal equilibrium (impressive words huh).  Basically, when you put a hot object next to a cold one, the heat from the hot object will transfer to the cold object making both objects warm.

That’s exactly what happens to a thermometer.  The mercury inside (in the old days we used mercury) rises and falls when it is heated or cooled.

Gabriel Fahrenheit came up with his scale in 1724.  He measured boiling water at 212 degrees, and then he adjusted the freezing point at 32 so the interval would be 180.  That is the cool thing about inventing stuff.  You get to set the scale where ever you want.  Gabriel was also the first guy to use mercury in his thermometer.

Just like every other invention, Fahrenheit’s scale was improved upon in 1745 by Carolus Linnaeus.  He invented a centigrade scale making 0 when water freezes and 100 when it boils.

Centigrade and Celsius are about the same thing but don’t let the scientists hear you say that.  Both Fahrenheit and Centigrade scales are widely used today.  Watch the notation behind a temperature closely because the scales are very different.

Fahrenheit and Centigrade are good scales to measure the temperature but arctic fronts in January will always to cold.  Frigid even.  BRRR.

Pack out what you pack in.

 

Sources:

Website:  http://eo.ucar.edu/skymath/tmp2.html

Overkill

Sometimes I wonder how the settlers survived without 24 hour weather channels.  I’ve been told for the last five days that an arctic cold front will come through.  As I write this it’s January in Wisconsin.  It’s going to get cold.  Duh.

I’ve never been a fan of the production we make over the weather.  Please don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the work a meteorologist puts into studying the science of weather.  As my past blogs show there is a lot to learn about weather.

Knowledge is a good thing.  Being beaten over the head with that knowledge is not.

The producers of news programming are just looking for ratings.  I get that, but I am tired of seeing reporters in front of salt piles every time it snows.

Would I be one of those who rides out a hurricane?  I don’t think so, but I don’t run to the grocery store to stock up on bread and milk every time the weather guy tells me a winter weather advisory will be in place next week Thursday.

It’s important to be safe.  That’s why I wouldn’t hang out in the middle of a hurricane.  And why I get to the lowest place of my home when the tornado sirens go off.  I slow down when I drive in the snow.  Common sense stuff.  Too bad the news folks can’t figure that out.

Pack out what you pack in.